


Agenda

by katrinawritesthings



Series: Intersex au [1]
Category: SHINee
Genre: Brotp, Intersex, NB, Nonbinary, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-10-20 20:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10670412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katrinawritesthings/pseuds/katrinawritesthings
Summary: high school au where jong is afab and eunsookie is amab and tae is neither“Hey, not to be rude or anything, but are you a boy or a girl?”Jonghyun first looks up at Jake, and then follows his gaze to Tae, who’s still focused on writing down a description in blue sharpie. He thinks for a moment that Tae is just going to ignore Jake and raises his brows, but then Tae opens their mouth.“Destroy the gender binary,” they mumble.tumblr





	Agenda

The first time Jonghyun sees them, he hasn’t had nearly enough of his morning orange juice and barely even notices the minute it takes them to shuffle up to their history teacher and hand her a piece of paper. He notices them sitting on the other side of the room about halfway through the class and shrugs them off as just another new student that he’ll always be too tired to really talk to. **  
**

The next time Jonghyun sees them, it’s during third period bio and he learns that their name is Tae and that they’re into dancing, fashion, and politics. That sounds interesting enough. Their teacher sits them in the row next to Jonghyun after they introduce themself, but three seats up, so he can’t exactly reach out a hand in welcome. He does get a closer, more awake look though, and he thinks that when they said that they were into fashion, they really meant it. They have such a casual kind of style to them: it’s just a regular skinnies/sweater combo, but they’re fitted perfectly and the kid really knows how to accessorize. Something about the belt and scarf and studs in their ears makes them look much more… coordinated, instead of just keeping up with the current popular style like Jonghyun does.

He thinks, if they ever get a chance to talk, he’ll tell them that he likes their red hair.

The third time Jonghyun sees Tae, they’re being seated right next to him during sixth period government class. He doesn’t tell them that he likes their hair because sadly, he’s too busy rushing to first find his homework in the mess of his bag, and then finish it before he has to turn it in. He could have sworn he’d done it before, but obviously he didn’t, and he can't for the life of him imagine how it slipped his mind. By the time he actually can spare a minute to talk to Tae, class has already started.

As usual, he starts to lose focus around the midway point when all of the vocabulary comes along, and his eyes drift over to where Tae is diligently taking their own notes. They look super into the whole “History of Democracy” thing. That’s two out of three interests down; Jonghyun wonders if he’ll ever get to see Tae dance. Their teacher has eyes like a hawk so he doesn’t try to talk to Tae or anything, but he does stare absentmindedly at their stuff. Headphones dangling out of their jacket pocket, a rosary among the other bracelets on their wrist, a banana shaped pencil case, neat lettering on their binder, an assortment of colorful striped buttons pinned to their bag….

Jonghyun props his chin up in his hand and focuses a little more on the buttons decorating Tae’s bag. One of them is striped blue, pink, white, pink, and then blue again. Jonghyun recognizes those colors as the transgender flag colors. He himself has them painted (kind of badly) on his nails, as his own little secret identifier to other queers of the world. He doesn’t think anyone other than the friends that he’s already out to have noticed, but still. He gets a little tingle of pride whenever he looks at his hands. Looking at the one button now, he nibbles at the skin of his thumb. Could Tae be? Part of him is excited and eager to find out, but a bigger part errs heavily on the side of caution.

He finds other buttons on Tae’s bag to study. One is striped in black, dark grey, light grey, and green; the agender flag. Dark green, light green, yellow, and grey with a black triangle stands for what Jonghyun is pretty sure is demi romanticism, and another button with green, grey, and white is grey romanticism, Jonghyun thinks. There’s also a button that has a red heart with a blue infinity symbol twisted through it, and Jonghyun knows for sure that that one means polyamory, because he went through a time where he thought maybe that applied to him, too.

Another is pink, purple, and blue; bisexual. Black, grey, white, and purple mark asexual, but that one’s pinned to a sewed on patch of grey. Grey-ace, maybe? Jonghyun skimmed something a while ago about a lot of specific ace-spec identities not having their own flags. Maybe the patch is Tae’s stubborn way of making it more custom. Or maybe they’re just ace and there was a hole in his bag. Or maybe they’re allo and Jonghyun is just reading too much into a bunch of pretty colors. He doesn’t even know if all of these little buttons even mean anything or if he’s just so thirsty for another queer friend that he’s pulling evidence out of his ass. There’s also a yellow button with a purple circle that he’s never seen before in his life. They could all just be random, for all he knows.

Still, there is no mistaking that polyamory symbol, and if that one is real, why wouldn’t the others be? Jonghyun turns more towards the front of the class before he lets his eyes travel up to Tae’s face. It probably still looks like he’s staring, but hopefully he’s a little less obvious than he could be. Tae’s profile is pretty; pretty pretty pretty. That’s the only word he can think of to describe them without getting too complicated. Round cheeks, plush lips, long lashes, and a hook at the end of their nose all seem to fit perfectly well with each other, and long red hair tickles their cheeks and falls down to kiss their collarbones. If Jonghyun squints close enough, though, he can see the faint line of a clip-in extension that wasn’t covered up well enough. He grins. That’s kind of cute. He likes when people play with hair lengths. He would do it himself if he didn’t like his baseball cap ponytail look so much.

Sudden rustling around him makes Jonghyun start and look around; fuck. He missed the end of the notes and the homework. He scrambles to sit up straight and squint at the board at where their teacher is writing down what questions they need to answer. Once he’s done, he glances quickly between Tae and the clock. Hmm. Fifteen minutes before school ends. Tae will be here for him to talk to tomorrow; he flips his book open and focuses on finishing his homework now before he has another panic rush like he did earlier.

He winds up staying after class for a few minutes to make sure he finishes, but that’s nothing new. Tae leaves after the bell rings with a tired hike of their bag over their shoulder and Jonghyun glances up absentmindedly to see them tugging their headphones out of their jacket. As Tae disappears in the crowd of students filling the hallway, he sees Eunsook peeping her head into the classroom like she usually does when Jonghyun isn’t immediately outside. He waves with a grin; she grins back and slips inside, fixing the pretty pink flower behind her ear. It matches her flowy dress perfectly like usual.

“Hey,” she says when she gets close enough. “Wanna go get ice cream and listen to me whine about my Adam’s apple for an hour?” She’s smiling as she says it, but Jonghyun doesn’t miss the little shake of her lip and the way she fidgets with the big necklace around her neck. He tsks sympathetically and finishes up his last sentence.

“Sure,” he says. It’s one of the ways they bond. Grilled cheese, sex, and whining about their trans problems. Eunsook complains about the one little bit of dysphoria she has left, Jonghyun groans about everyone knowing him by the wrong identity because he grew up with them all before he discovered himself… it’s nice. Comforting. They probably won’t get around to the banging part since Jonghyun has a bunch of math to do, but there’s always a fifty-fifty chance that they’ll wind up at either one of their homes and make some grilled cheese sandwiches, which are kind of better, in Jonghyun’s opinion. He packs his stuff up into his bag and lugs it over his shoulder, following Eunsook out of the classroom. He’ll talk to Tae tomorrow, hopefully, if he has more free time.

~

Tomorrow, as it turns out, brings nothing but the dark despair of two hours of sleep and a forgotten wallet. He goes through the day fueled on a pity tangerine that Kibum gives him during second period and a McDonald’s kids’ meal he begged Minho to buy him during lunch. He owes Minho a favor for that, but he’s not half dead during algebra, so he guesses it was worth it.

Sixth period kind of starts going downhill again, after the relief of food goes away and the realization that that was his first meal of fast food in three years and he can feel the grease of a broken streak settling inside of his very soul, but whatever. At least it got him through his algebra quiz. Now, he just has to stay propped up and half-ass some notes and then go home and pretend like this Tuesday never happened.

It’s as he’s trying to make his hand scribble down the homework that he remembers that he was supposed to talk to Tae today. He remembers very, very suddenly, in the form of a banana shaped pencil case launching itself at his feet and emptying all over the floor. He doesn’t even jump because he's so tired, but he does furrow his brow and frown at the mess of pencils and erasers under his desk. What.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.” He looks up and finds Tae giving him an apologetic look, already bending down to grab a sharpie and a case of lead. Jonghyun manages a reassuring smile and  leans over to gently kick some of Tae’s stuff towards them.

“It’s okay,” he mumbles. He bends down to pick up what looks like a tiny strawberry that turns out to be one of those cute novelty put-together erasers, smiling at it for a second before handing it over. “Uh, I’m--Jonghyun.” He hesitates for half a second before telling Tae his real name instead of his birth name. Normally he doesn’t (partly because most of the sophomore class already knows him as his birth name and partly to avoid all of the “isn't that a boy name” questions), but he can practically _feel_ the queer coming off of Tae. It feels safe enough to let them know. He can always just say that Tae misheard him later, if it backfires.

“Tae,” he gets as a reply, with a thankful smile. He nods as Tae gathers the rest of their crap from the floor and sits up straight to stuff it all back into their case. Jonghyun watches them thoughtfully, tapping his thumb against his bottom lip. That wasn’t exactly a good talk, but it was an introduction, and it’s not like he’s awake enough to hold a good conversation right now anyway. He’ll get to know Tae more tomorrow, definitely, because how long he’s taking will start to bug him by then. For now, he tiredly packs up his own stuff and waits for the bell to ring them out of class.

He catches Eunsook at the door and leans obnoxiously on her shoulder until she agrees to buy him food.

~

The whole “getting to know Tae better” thing goes way different from how he was expecting on Wednesday. In first period history, when he’s still nursing his morning orange juice, they’re all randomly sorted into groups to cobble together a timeline for the chapter they’re studying. Tae winds up lumping all of their stuff into the same group of desks that Jonghyun was sent to, so he kind of smiles and sits opposite them as their other three groupmates take their seats as well. Tae gives him a pointed look and a discreet nod towards their group; Jonghyun gives the three a quick glance over. Richa, Yvonne, and Jake. One quiet girl, one stoner chick, and one fuckboy. He gives Tae a simple shrug. Could be better, could be worse. At least fuckboy’s friend isn’t with him, too. Tae shrugs back at him in understanding before their teacher starts giving out instructions again.

He’s busy flipping through the chapter to figure out when exactly it was that some white boy fucked some shit up when another white boy starts fucking shit up.

“Hey, not to be rude or anything, but are you a boy or a girl?”

Jonghyun first looks up at Jake, and then follows his gaze to Tae, who’s still focused on writing down a description in blue sharpie. He thinks for a moment that Tae is just going to ignore Jake and raises his brows, but then Tae opens their mouth.

“Destroy the gender binary,” they mumble, and if Jonghyun didn’t know that the gender binary was a thing, he probably would have thought that he heard wrong. Jake, who obviously doesn’t know that the gender binary is a thing, frowns and leans a little closer like he heard wrong.

“Uh, what?” he asks. Tae just hums shortly in reply and switches to a green sharpie to ink in a date. Jonghyun slowly scans through the book, glancing up every other second at Jake as he frowns across their timeline. He spares a glance at Tae, too, and an amused little smile. Destroy the gender binary, huh. He likes the sound of that. “Are you male or female?” Jake asks. There’s almost a commanding tone to his voice. Here’s where Jonghyun would start trying to redirect the conversation, but--

“Destroy the sex binary,” Tae mumbles this time. Jonghyun kind of wishes they would look up so they could see his secret little smile of approval, but he respects the whole deadpan aloof thing they have going on. It seems to be getting under their fuckboy’s skin, if the way he bristles up means anything.

“Do you have a dick or a cunt?” he demands. “You have to have one or the other.”

“Destroy intersex erasure.” _Intersex._ Fuck. Jonghyun fumbles loudly in his pencil box to cover up his embarrassing gasp of realization. That must be what the button he didn’t recognize on Tae’s bag meant. He can’t believe that he forgot. He’s guilty, damn it. He makes a note to himself to look up all of the intersex shit he said he would look up like, half a year ago later. Meanwhile, Tae still hasn’t looked up from their careful writing and Jake looks more frustrated than ever.

“Look, just--what the fuck is in your pants?” he snaps. Jonghyun shifts a little uncomfortably in his seat. They’re really moving into “things Jonghyun fears about his future” territory here. Across from him, Tae finally looks up with a cocked brow.

“Why do you wanna get in my pants?” they ask. Jake recoils, offended.

“Well, I don’t,” he says. Tae’s other brow rises to join the other.

“So why are you asking?”

“Because you won’t tell me if you're a dude or a chick,” Jake says. Tae looks back down at their work with a little shrug.

“Destroy the gender binary,” they say again. Jake flips his hand in the air with a pissy little mutter of “oh my god” and Jonghyun giggles on reflex. He quickly tries to stifle it when Jake turns his frown on him, but it doesn’t work.

“What are you laughing at?” Jake asks. Jonghyun glances quickly at Tae--they’re looking back at him with a more serious expression--before he shrugs in a hopefully nonchalant way.

“Well, I mean, Tae’s right,” he says, reaching up anxiously to tug at his ponytail. Fuck. He hates this pit of doom that always forms in his stomach when gender things come up with people that aren’t his close friends. Especially when those people are fuckboys. They’re in the middle of a crowded classroom and Jake looks like a twig could snap him in half, but still, Jonghyun doesn’t feel _safe_. His dread increases when Jake squints at him suspiciously. Luckily--thankfully--Yvonne lobs an eraser between the three of them and snaps at them all to shut up and do their work.

Score points for stoner girl.

He and Tae exchange a look that’s both relief and understanding, and Jonghyun manages to give them a little smile before he goes back to reading the book.

The rest of the class goes by without incident, but also up until the bell, so Jonghyun has no time to talk to Tae more about their whole queer agenda of destruction thing. It doesn’t bother him too much; third period bio comes quickly enough.

Wednesday brings up the start of lab days in bio, so when the rest of the class all shuffles back there and gets into their groups, Jonghyun hangs back for a second for Tae. They’re shuffling considerably slower than the others, hanging back in the most casual way possible. They catch Jonghyun’s eye and he grins. He knows the whole “new kid doesn’t have any friends to be in a group with” look; he was kind of banking on it. He jerks his head towards the lab and wiggles his eyebrows invitingly; Tae’s little smile turns relieved and they follow him in.

“Hey, thanks,” they mumble. Jonghyun leads him to his group’s table.

“No problem,” he grins. “This is, uh,” he looks around to see who’s here today, “Vince and José. Storm’s sick this week or something.” He gestures at his third period friends as they both wave or say hi. Tae smiles politely at both of them.

“What, you’re friends with the new kid already, Junghee?” José asks. “How do you always wind up knowing everyone?”

“Natural charm,” Jonghyun grins. That has to be it; the most communication he’s done so far with Tae has been through secret looks and smiles. He hasn’t really had time to win Tae over with his stunning vocabulary yet. He throws Tae another smile for good measure. Tae returns it, but adds in a curious tilt of the head, and, when the other two aren’t looking, mouths “Junghee?”

Oh. Shit. Whoops.

“Hey, can you two go get the instructions and shit?” Jonghyun asks quickly, turning to the other two and making flappy hands at the back of the room. Good thing he always gets them to do this. They agree easily and head to the back; Jonghyun waits until they’re out of earshot before he gives Tae a sheepish grin. “Birth name,” he says. Tae hums and nods in understanding immediately. Jonghyun feels the small buildup of panic in his stomach quickly wash over with relief and tugs his notebook out of his bag. “Uh, call me, Junghee, during class, please,” he adds meekly. He can’t believe that he didn’t realize that something like this would happen. Tae nods agreeably, but Jonghyun still feels the need to elaborate.

“The only people I let call me Jonghyun are my close friends,” he says, looking up to shrug at Tae. Tae, who he first spoke to less than twenty-four hours ago. And who he told his real name. As literally the second thing he ever said to them. “Uh--” he stammers. “I mean--or--people that I mean to be close with--I mean. Uh.” Fuck. Tae is looking at him with something suspiciously close to a smirk. Why did he feel the need to elaborate? This is a fucking mess. He feels his cheeks reddening in shame as he reaches up to tug at his ponytail. “Look, just--I’m like ninety-seven percent sure that you’re queerer than I am and I trust you, okay?”

“Chill,” Tae says. Their hand comes up to hide a giggle and Jonghyun’s hands rise to hide his whole face. It’s probably crimson by now. “It’s cool, I understand,” Tae insists. They still have a wide grin that Jonghyun can hear, but he does feel reassured. He’s not a complete embarrassment, at least. “Um--I’m guessing you only go by she pronouns during class, too, then?”

“Correct.” Jonghyun pops out from behind his hands with less of a blush than before. “My close friends call me he. My close friends and… you.” Turning his fuckup into a joke makes it not a fuckup anymore, right? Sure. “Um,” he says, trying to cover it up anyway, “I’ve been calling you ‘they’ in my head but--can I ask your pronouns?” He’d hesitated to before, since Tae was so tight-lipped about their gender towards Jake, but this is a completely different circumstance in many ways, such as how Tae asked first and the fact that Jonghyun is not a fuckboy. Tae cocks an eyebrow with an amused twitch of the lips.

“Just use my name in class, but I let my close friends use ne.”

“Ne?” Jonghyun asks. Ne. He’s looked those up before. “That’s… ne, nem….”

“Nir, nirs, nemself, yeah,” Tae grins. “I think they're cute.”

“Nice, nice,” Jonghyun hums. He can feel that. He taps his pencil on his notebook and glances at the back for their lab partners for no more than a second before he turns back to Tae so fast he almost cricks his neck. “Wait,” he says. “You fucking--” Ne fucking said _nir close friends._ “God damn it,” he mutters. Tae’s grin turns even wider than before. Before Jonghyun can do anything more than squint at nem in a decidedly offended manner, Vince and José come back to start the lab. He settles for making a face at Tae when the other two aren’t looking.

This period, Tae only has to mumble “destroy the gender binary” once before their other two lab partners nod in vague understanding. Jonghyun grins smugly to himself at how easily they took it. He’s closeted as fuck during class but at least his “casual” blabs about gender shit have rubbed off on them anyway. He waves Tae off after class ends, heading left towards literature while Tae wanders right towards the foreign language wing. He wonders if ne knows the shortcut through the student center for a moment, then shrugs and decides to let nem know later.

Later, obviously, is during government class, though Jonghyun doesn’t actually get to talk to nem much because the teacher starts some documentary right at the start to make sure that they finish before the class ends. It’s actually kind of interesting; stuff about racist politicians in the sixties and suppressing minority votes legally and the aftereffects today and shit, so Jonghyun actually pays close attention for once. He even gives good, actual answers on his worksheet instead of just bullshitting whatever.

It ends less than two minutes before class lets out; Tae stands up almost immediately to turn nir worksheet in with everyone else. Jonghyun reaches out to tap nir elbow urgently, then gives nem his paper as well, batting his eyelashes innocently when Tae squints at him for a moment.

“Lazy,” ne mutters, but takes it anyway and tosses it into the pile on their teacher’s desk. When ne gets back, ne sits facing Jonghyun and tugs nir bag over nir shoulder. “Hi,” ne says, crossing nir legs, setting nir elbow on nir knee, and propping nir chin in nir hand. Jonghyun smiles back, tugging his backpack forward on his desk to use as a pillow.

“Hey,” he hums back. He remembers that he had something to tell Tae earlier but he can’t remember. “Wanna hang out after school?” he asks, just as the bell rings. He glances at the clock above the door with a little grin. Perfect timing. Tae smiles, but it’s a sad little smile.

“Yeah,” ne says, “but I gotta get home early or my dog will piss herself.” Ne shrugs; Jonghyun gasps almost too loudly.

“I fucking love dogs,” he hisses. He nuzzles his bag with a little smile. They’re so soft and sweet and wonderful and happy and perfect. Tae laughs at his sleepy excitement and stands up.

“Yeah, well,” ne says. “Can I get your number?” Ne asks, and when Jonghyun hands nem his phone easily, “Can I come find you at lunch tomorrow? I haven’t really found anyone I’m comfortable enough with yet.”

“Oh, uh,” Jonghyun says. He wants to say yes, but he really has to ask everyone else first. Tae might be Super Queer McVaguepants, but it’s kind of a safety thing in his group of friends. The last person someone let join them without asking said that bi and pan people shouldn’t be allowed to call themselves queer if they were in a het relationship. Like… yikes. “Maybe,” he says as Tae hands him back his phone. “I’ll have to ask--Eunsookie!” He brightens when his friend pops up behind Tae, looking for him after class like usual.

“Hmm?” Tae says, looking behind nem. “Oh, hi.” Ne smiles politely, mirroring Eunsook. Jonghyun grins between the both of them. His friends are so cute. He stands up himself, hiking his bag over his shoulder so he can leave with Eunsook.

“Tae, Eunsook; Eunsook, Tae,” he says, flapping a hand between the two of them. “Eunsookie, Tae is also--um--new.” Fuck.

“Also… new,” Eunsook says slowly. She raises a brow at him; when Jonghyun glances at Tae, ne is doing the same. _Fuck._ He was going to say queer but he didn’t know if Tae would appreciate being outed like that, and he knows that Eunsook wouldn’t. Now he just looks foolish. Tae lets him suffer for a few more seconds before tugging nir bag to nir front and holding it in nir arms.

“I’m all of this shit,” ne says, holding the bag up so they can look closer at all of the buttons. Eunsook looks everything over, bottom lip between her teeth; she throws Jonghyun a quick glance and cocks her left eyebrow in askance. Jonghyun nods that yes, Tae is cool and trustworthy so far, so she turns back to nem with that wide smile of hers.

“Nice,” she says, poking the trans button. Tae moves nir bag to squint at which one she tapped, then grins and nods.

“Super nice,” ne says. Jonghyun beams with Eunsook this time. He super agrees. “Anyway,” Tae says, letting nir bag fall back to nir side. “See you tomorrow.” Ne lifts nir hand in a wave and walks out, pulling nir ipod out of nir pocket as ne goes. Jonghyun watches nem fondly, then turns to Eunsook with a little eyebrow wiggle.

“Grilled cheese?” he asks, and she nods easily.

“And lit homework,” she adds, tugging his elbow to get him to follow her out of the classroom. “Uh, don’t tell Tae,” she says, glancing back at him with a guilty expression, “but I don’t remember what half of those flags meant.”

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to look a few of them up myself,” Jonghyun admits. He keeps not having time. He’ll get to it over the weekend. He really just counts himself lucky that he only had to memorize the trans flag and the pan flag. Eunsook stops him from walking passed the side door out of the building with her usual smirk and Jonghyun huffs with his usual grumble. It’s a weird ass place to put a door and he hates it. “Tae wants to hang with us at lunch,” he says, moving the conversation along for them before she can say something about it.

“Oh,” she says. She frowns at him as she holds the door open. “Didn’t you just meet Monday?” she asks.

“I mean,” Jonghyun says, tugging at his ponytail. Technically it was yesterday. “Yeah. But! Fuckboy number two tried getting all fuckboy on Tae earlier in lit.” He pauses to make sure that Eunsook knows which fuckboy he’s talking about; she nods at him to keep going. “And he’s like, ‘are you a boy or a girl,’ and Tae’s like, ‘destroy the gender binary,’ and _I’m_ like, ‘sign me the fuck up,’ right?” Eunsook giggles when he looks at her again for confirmation. He’s totally right.

“Yeah, right, true,” Eunsook agrees. “Was that it, though?” she asks. “You can’t base a whole person on a general understanding of the gender binary. Like, remember that asshole that--”

“Yeah, I remember,” Jonghyun says. The biphobic asshole. There’s only ever been that one. Both of them grimace at each other at the memory before Jonghyun gets them back on track. “But, Tae’s bi, too, and also wants to destroy the sex binary and intersex erasure, and probably, you know, a bunch of other shit.” He wishes he were better at expressing his thoughts. He doesn’t know how describe the feeling of just good vibes that he gets from Tae. It’s a feeling in his stomach that ne’s alright.

“Hmm.” Eunsook hums in thought as she digs in her bag for her keys. Then she shrugs. “I trust you,” she says. “But you still have to ask the others first.” She stops him second time before he walks passed her car with another smirk. He huffs a second time. He’s aware of his surroundings, damn it.

“I got Tae’s number,” he grumbles, patting his phone in his pocket. “I’ll text everyone else and then Tae if they have any questions about it. Yeah?” He looks at his friend over her car to see if she likes his plan. Eunsook thinks for a moment, then smiles.

“Yeah,” she agrees.

~

On Thursday, when Jonghyun slumps down in first period and nuzzles his cheek against his morning orange juice, Tae catches his eye from the other side of the classroom and grins. Jonghyun smiles back and gives nem a little wave. He’s eager to tell nem about the whole lunch arrangement thing, but this time when they’re put into groups, they don’t get put together. Jonghyun kind of shrugs at Tae when ne catches his eye again halfway through. He’ll talk to nem about it later.

Later, in Bio, he realizes over the idle chattering of their other two lab partners that they won’t really be able to talk about it here, either. Still, they kind of have to; Jonghyun won’t know where to find them after fourth period to let them know. When he realizes that they’re going to be doing some math shit for the lab he perks up immediately. Fuck yes. He digs his phone out from his pocket and opens up the calculator app so it’ll be ready if he has to make a quick switch, then taps back to his text conversation from Tae last night. It’s not really much; just some questions that the others wanted him to ask about Tae’s views on various topics and a meme Tae sent him at three in the morning. Now, he gives Tae a meaningful little look as he sends nem a new text.

 **To: Tae  
** 10:23am  
So the general consensus of my friends is that you can come chill with us at lunch!!

 **From: Tae  
** 10:24am  
hashtag super ~u*

Jonghyun snorts at his phone. That is the shittiest winkyface he’s ever seen. Still, it’s a positive confirmation and it makes him smile. They text back and forth quickly before their lab partners can start frowning at them to do their work, figuring out what class each has for fourth period and the best place to meet to walk to Jonghyun’s lunch place together.

Two hours later, they meet up at the vending machine at the end of the math wing and Jonghyun amusedly returns the high five Tae holds up for him. Ne never struck him as a spontaneous high-fiver, but, hey. Learn something new every day. He hikes his bag more over his shoulder and gestures for Tae to follow him, noticing the buttons on nir bag again when ne does the same.

“That’s the intersex flag, right?” he asks, pointing at the purple circle. Tae glances at it, then nods.

“Yeah,” ne says, “one of them. There are a couple, but this was the one that I like the explanation for the most, so.” Ne shrugs and taps all of the other buttons on nir bag as they pass the language wing. “Grey ace, demi aro, bi, polyamorous, trans, agender…” Ne frowns a little as ne taps the last two, humming quietly to nemself. “Though…,” ne says slowly. “I’ve kinda been thinking.” There’s a contemplative little pout on nir lips as ne looks back up at Jonghyun; Jonghyun hums to show that he’s listening and interested.

“I think,” Tae says as they stop to let a group of freshman pass, “I don’t really identify as trans? Or agender.” Ne lifts a hand to run through nir short red hair with a little shrug. “I think I was just aggressively clinging to those when I lived with my mom because she kept… trying to force a gender on me. So it was like. Rebellion, or whatever.” Jonghyun nods slowly as he gently pushes Tae to continue forward; he didn’t know he was going to get a front row seat to Tae’s life story. Either Tae really trusts him all of a sudden or it’s just not that big of a secret. “But, I mean,” Tae says. “I live with my dad now, and he’s…? Not a fucking anus?” Ne gives Jonghyun this look, like ne’s asking him to agree; Jonghyun nods in agreement. He wouldn’t exactly know if his parents are assholes or not because he’s never mentioned anything to them, but he understands the concept. Eunsook was in the same boat before she moved in with her mom and transferred to this school last year.

“And he lets me be me and he actually gave me some sites and shit to look up, when I first moved in with him, and….” Tae is smiling now, grateful and relieved, and Jonghyun finds himself smiling also. He’s glad Tae has the support of at least one parent. “And I’d already seen the sites he gave me, obviously, but anyway--” Tae shakes nir head to get back on nir right train of thought. "My point was--I think now I’m comfortable enough to identify as, you know, intersex. And intergender. Both. And, I mean, I _guess_ that makes me cis, because I _was_ assigned as intersex, my dad made sure of that at least, but. I’m also nonbinary. If that makes sense? But also, to be honest, I’m gonna look up more shit about this later because I just realized right now that calling myself cis makes me just. Extremely uncomfortable. But, whatever. You know?”

“Um,” Jonghyun says. Tae got a little fast there with nir words near the end, but he thinks he got the gist of it. It makes sense, yeah, if he thinks about it. Tae identifies with the gender ne was assigned at birth, but is also definitely not part of the gender binary. It fits. And even if ne does decide that ne’s something else later, that’ll be fine. It’s just good that ne’s able to figure nemself out like this. “Yeah,” he says, when he realizes that Tae is waiting for him to say something. He smiles a little too late, apparently, because Tae laughs a little sheepishly and rubs nir nose.

“Sorry,” ne says, “I didn’’t mean to get all soul-searchy on you.”

“It’s cool,” Jonghyun grins, waving away Tae’s concerns. He knows how important it is to have someone listen to you. He stops Tae for just a minute when they pass his locker, bending down and fumbling to undo the lock so he can shove all of his crap in there before straightening up again. As he does, he catches sight of the buttons that don’t represent Tae anymore. Hmm. “Hey,” he says slowly, poking at the trans one. “Does that mean you don’t need this anymore?” he asks, batting his eyelashes pleasantly. Tae laughs, shaking nir head fondly.

“No, I don’t,” ne says. Ne reaches down to take it off of nir bag and hands it over easily. Jonghyun snatches it up eagerly, grinning bright at his colors and pinning it to his own bag. Eunsook is gonna be so jealous. When he looks back up from that, Tae is pulling off the agender button as well. “Didn’t you say one of your friends was agender?” ne asks, wiggling it a little. Jonghyun nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “Minho. You should give it to him. He’s a sucker for little gifts like that.” There is no way that MInho won’t like Tae if ne gives him that button. Tae smiles, nodding and stuffing the button into nir pocket.

“Well, okay then,” ne says. “I’ll just buy all of my new friends’ love with MOGAI buttons. It’s a foolproof plan.” Ne wiggles nir eyebrows and Jonghyun bursts into giggles, laughter that continues as he leads Tae around the side of the history wing and into their friend group.


End file.
